Children of the Master

Part comedy, part political thriller, the second novel from eminent political commentator Andrew Marr takes an in-the-know look at the great churning machine that is Whitehall. It’s 2018 and the Labour Party is freshly (and narrowly) in control, with a leader who commands little respect in the Commons and is unpopular with the public. Behind the scenes a group of the party’s former bigwigs, including political king-maker ‘The Master’, sets about grooming two Labour MPs to be pitted against each other in a bid for the premiership: David Petrie, a Scottish former builder campaigning to keep Scotland in the United Kingdom; and Caroline Phillips, a posh Londoner married to a female priest. Like Head of State, Marr’s first fictional outing, his second title places the dirty business of politics in the spotlight, and as he writes about a world he knows intimately, it leaves readers wondering just how close to the truth his stories really come. Head of State managed to predict Brexit, so perhaps Master of the Children can offer up some hope to those who voted to remain in the referendum of June 2016, as its plot takes place 10 years after the country fictitiously leaves the EU, and shows the effects of doing so to be so disastrous that the nation is given a chance to re-join it.